


a single atom changes locations

by fleurmatisse



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everybody Lives, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, kind of meta discussions of alternate universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-20 03:44:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20221252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurmatisse/pseuds/fleurmatisse
Summary: In another universe, Neil pulls the trigger.





	a single atom changes locations

Meeks had talked about branching universes once. He’d said it wasn’t his kind of science, he preferred taking things apart and putting them back together, but it had caught his interest enough that’d he’d brought it up at the end of a study group, when they’d all been losing focus on their actual science homework. “Essentially,” he’d said, “if a single atom was in a different location, everything would change. The different universes are all the different possibilities.”

The idea weaved itself through Neil’s ribs, wrapped up his insides, brought to his attention every time he so much as breathed. There were different versions of him out there; ones that wanted to be doctors, ones that didn’t go to Welton, ones that grew up in money like Charlie and Knox and Meeks. He wondered what made each of them the way they were, and how many of them were suffocating like him.

“A single atom out of place,” he said to Charlie one night. They’d snuck out under the guise of Charlie wanting to smoke, as if he didn’t already do that in their room. “Think about it! Not even a—a choice, just an  _ atom _ , and you could be an entirely different person.” 

It was bright from the moon, anybody could spot them huddled on the side of the dormitory if they thought to look outside, and Neil could see his breath as clearly as the smoke escaping Charlie’s nose as he turned to face Neil, an eyebrow raised.

“I can see you haven’t given this much thought,” Charlie said, and Neil almost asked what he meant before he caught the sarcasm. He rolled his eyes and looked out at the lawn that went on and on until it met the trees.

“Like you haven’t thought about it,” Neil said, hunching further into his sweater. 

“What iteration of me could be better than this one?” Charlie asked, blowing smoke in Neil’s face.

Neil reeled back, laughing despite himself, and shoved Charlie with the hand that wasn’t waving away smoke. “One that doesn’t do that.”

Charlie offered him his cigarette as consolation. Neil took a half-hearted drag, an acceptance, and handed it back. Charlie smirked, triumphant, and held the cigarette in his mouth long after he’d have usually flicked away ash with a restless hand. Neil leaned his head back against the wall, watching in his periphery as Charlie leaned next to him, sharing warmth shoulder-to-elbow, and had a passing thought.

In a different universe. 

It started like a comfort. Somewhere out there, Neil didn’t have to do mountains of homework that took until lights out to complete. He didn’t have to go along with his father’s idea that the school paper was just an extracurricular, an indulgence. Somewhere out there, Neil stood up to his father, and somewhere in another universe, his father listened, or his mother stood up with him, or he didn’t have to think about what it would mean to defy his father in the first place. That always made the idea take a bitter turn, and he would make himself stop thinking about it until the next time he did it didn’t make his stomach drop out, he didn’t feel like he’d been dunked in the ocean in the middle of November, and it was a comfort again.

Until one day he decided those other selves of his shouldn’t be getting better lives than him. A Saturday specifically, when Neil had miraculously finished all his work early, and Charlie either also finished or somehow convinced Meeks to do it for him, and although Neil half-wanted to nap in the sun warming his bed, he instead said, “I think we should go somewhere today.”

“Somewhere, huh?” Charlie said, watching him from where he’d reclined on his own bed. Neil shrugged. Charlie grinned. “What a wonderfully vague idea.”

Somewhere was just outside of town, where Charlie declared he needed a break from biking and sat on the edge of what was probably a farm. Neil sat beside him and accepted the cigarette held out to him. 

“I’ve been thinking about your universes,” Charlie said. He had his own cigarette, already lit, and leaned into Neil’s space to share the flame instead of just handing him the lighter. 

“Mine specifically?” Neil replied, resting his elbows on his knees. 

“The entire concept,” Charlie said, spared a haughty glance to Neil as he added, “Don’t be so self-centered.” Neil shook his head, looking away to hide his smile. “There could be a bunch of different ones out there, and we might exist or we might not. There’s gotta be a ton where we don’t. So what does it matter if there’s some other reality where we’re all replaced by alien plants? Isn’t this one, the one where we’re sitting here talking about it, the only one we should care about?” Charlie paused to smoke, and continued on his exhale. “I mean, sorry to plant-Charlie, but his fate is already sealed.”

Neil looked at him, leaning back on one hand like he often sits in fields and discusses theoretical physics. Neil had that passing thought again, one that had crossed his mind with regularity since he’d met Charlie. This was the only universe he should care about, but he’d thought about others where he didn’t just let the thought stay a thought. He looked at Charlie, who had noticed his silence by now, and when Charlie just quirked an eyebrow, a corner of his mouth lifting with it, Neil decided that was the version he wanted to be. 

This Neil kissed this Charlie on the side of this road, and this Charlie kissed him back.

In another universe, Tom Perry doesn’t care if his son wants a career in theater or medicine. He doesn’t tell his son he’ll be free to do whatever he wants after medical school, threaten him with military school, or do anything, really, to fill Neil with the suffocating feeling he’s experiencing right now. Eight years. Eight more years of this acting that he can’t stand. It might as well be an eternity.

He thinks of the other hims, in all their other universes. He’s a speck. A single strand. How many of them have wound up here, in their father’s office, taking the gun from the drawer? How many of them lift it to their temples, close their eyes, think of all the other Neils out there?

In another universe, he thinks, Neil pulls the trigger. His father finds him behind the desk, and his mother screams, and his friends are woken up from their beds to be told _ he’s dead _ . 

In this universe, Gale Perry is a light sleeper. She heard her son walking but didn’t hear him go back to bed. She finds him in his father’s office, staring at the gun in his hand like he isn’t quite sure how it got there.

“Neil,” she says, quiet and scared, and he looks up at her, blank.

“I don’t know what else to do,” he says, but he lets go of the gun, and he cries when she holds him close and tells him they’ll figure something out, it’ll be okay, it’ll be okay.

In this universe, he graduates from Welton, and he turns 18, and he keeps in touch with Mr. Keating after he leaves, and it doesn’t really matter what the other hims are doing, he thinks, when this one can share a shit apartment with Charlie, where their friends come to visit while they’re on break from college, but whatever atom changed its course, he’s happy it did.

**Author's Note:**

> who among us hasn't watched star trek, remembered that multiverses are a thing, and immediately applied it to a thirty year old movie that makes them cry on a regular basis? not that there's any reason i would be so specific haha anyway   
if you noticed a historical inaccuracy....my b. and all simplification of quantum theories that may or may not be wrong, again, my b.


End file.
